


same eyes (on different people)

by cosmic_interference



Series: We Thank Our Lucky Stars [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Jedi Ben Solo, Prequel-ish, Scavenger Rey (Star Wars), Young Ben Solo, Young Rey, densely-packed canon details, honestly, it really is just angst, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 03:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_interference/pseuds/cosmic_interference
Summary: The girl has been lugging the big speeder for the better part of an hour now, and yet the smile on her face is as bright as when she began. It is the same smile she had when she finished me, my rag-doll body in an orange flight suit fashioned from a New Republic cargo container.Since then, she has taken to bringing me everywhere she goes, down into the depths of the stripped down upside-down corridors of the hulking Star Destroyers in the distance, juts of weathered metal peeking out of the sand, just a few miles from their humble AT-AT home. She has taken me to Niima Outpost, smuggled me against her feeble chest only to set me down on her work station and talk to me about her day.--Alternatively:Young Ben and Rey through the perspective of Rey's doll, Raeh.





	same eyes (on different people)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bombthebum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombthebum/gifts).

> Since I am back, I will be finishing up some of the oneshots I hadn't touched in a month. This is so far one of my favorites and is a gift to an amazing person who encourages me to keep writing because of their amazing, amazing support. This is for you, [bombthebum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombthebum/profile)! For a little background, bombthebum's request was to write a oneshot of Rey and Ben's relationship through the eyes of her doll Raeh. I did my best (it was really challenging!) and this is what I came up with. I hope you like it as much as I do! <3
> 
> Special thanks to my beta [lovingreylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeaceBlessingsPeyton/pseuds/lovingreylo) for being an amazing beta as usual. :D
> 
> Before beginning this story, here are just some IMPORTANT NOTES: 
> 
> 1) I am not a technician/mechanic, or something similar, every engine description I have included came from tedious hours of staring at cross-sections, surfing Wookiepedia pages about starship engines, forum discussions, and imagination to tie them together. (I tried my best *sobs*)  
2) Liberties were taken.  
Ben and Rey here are only a year apart; Ben’s fall never happened and the timeline is 35 ABY, just a year after the TFA timeline so as to keep close to canon.  
3) Ben is a Jedi and Rey is still a scavenger. 
> 
> I'm also not sure if I should add a next chapter to this. I guess I'll base that decision on whether you guys end up liking this. Hehe. And so here it is!
> 
> PS. I also tried my hand at moodboarding for this story and I'm highkey proud of how it turned out!

**I**

In many ways, Niima Outpost is the beating heart of the Jakku wasteland. 

It is the seat of sorrows, erected on salvaged slapdash metal items, pilfered from the ruins of Imperial Star Destroyers buried in the heat of the dunes. The harsh winds create harsher people. Their clothes are soiled, covered in sand, tattered at the edges with nothing to replace it. Their faces are hard with lines, etched with grief and loneliness that came with constantly being adrift in bare nothingness. Travelers from across the galaxy do not venture out here, not even for a forced novelty, or the possibility to humble-brag back at the capital because they have reached a point in the galaxy where they could almost touch the Unknown Regions. 

None of these things mattered to them because Jakku is nothing but a dead planet; lost at the edges and so out of everyone’s radar that it took the dead and huddled along with them -- dead dreams, dead people, dead hopes, dead futures. Everything is dead. 

Here is where dreams come to die. 

The traders who come never stay, and the nameless Core Worlders awaiting their own chance at death never leave. No one knows why they come.

Surely, there are other ways to wait for one’s demise; any scavenger in the derelict bellies of Star Destroyers in the Starship Graveyard will say they fantasize about their deaths more than they fantasize about their meals. It’s odd, really, how easy it is for people here to talk about dying, even dream about it. Here, death is as beautiful as the thin halo around the sun when it’s high in the sky. Death sparkles, it is revered, it is a preferred fate to the challenge of staying alive, toasting in the heat and hoping a canister of water will last you long enough. 

No one here has anything to live for. 

No one except a little girl at 6, staring at the concession stand of Unkar Plutt at the outpost, at its robust cargo crawler exterior, repurposed on the inside to accommodate Plutt’s little business. The awning is torn through, shards of the unrelenting sunlight throwing disjointed shapes on the surface. It is the only structure that remains sound in this place. All the others get up and leave before the intense cold of night eats at the fringes of the battering heat -- all but Plutt’s remains. 

Rey sees nothing of it but a dingy little thing, sad and drab and filled with layers upon layers of agony, the same agony apparent in the bone-tired, sandpapered faces of the species who wait in line for scraps of food in exchange for anything they can find in the graveyards. In their hands they hold array parts, small engine components, dampers, motivators, and all other metal treasures traded in for a few packets of dehydrated food and a lick of water at best. 

But looking at the stall only makes Rey think about something other than dying: hope. 

As young as she had been, she made a choice. Rey of Jakku will live beyond the deaths in the dunes. She will live to seek the promise of the heavens; she will watch people pass by and learn what she can to adapt, to thrive, because for her young mind, a smile is worth more than a frown, a positive thought is more consuming that sadness. There will come a time when she will understand how naïve and wrong she is, but for now, ideals are necessary things. They will help her, and so she keeps them close at heart.

Until the time comes that they whittle at her soul, she bides her time by surviving, by learning, by doing whatever she can to keep that hope inside alive. 

Plutt shouts from inside the hutt and when she trudges forward in the sinking sands, her resolve is firmer than it has ever been before. Plutt thrusts some power converters her way, a wrench she can’t understand, and an accelerator and asks her to get to work on a speeder just outside. It’s a rustbucket, worse for wear in the worst possible way. It looks dead, too, hapless in the desert heat and, just like her, abandoned for something else. 

Plutt says it’s from a junk trader far out in Cratertown. Wherever that is. Wants it fixed, he said, but time was not generous to his bustling business and so the work will go to Rey. 

She kneels down, gritting her teeth as the sand scrapes her shins and knees, the grains rubbing against her skin and blistering them easy, but she gets to work.

And she never stops working. 

* * *

**GOAZON BADLANDS, Jakku **

**25 ABY**

The girl has been lugging the big speeder for the better part of an hour now, and yet the smile on her face is as bright as when she began. It is the same smile she had when she finished me, my rag-doll body in an orange flight suit fashioned from a New Republic cargo container. 

Since then, she has taken to bringing me everywhere she goes, down into the depths of the stripped down upside-down corridors of the hulking Star Destroyers in the distance, juts of weathered metal peeking out of the sand, just a few miles from their humble AT-AT home. She has taken me to Niima Outpost, smuggled me against her feeble chest only to set me down on her work station and talk to me about her day. 

On occasion, Plutt comes and whisks her back out in the sun, shoving tools in her hands and commanding her to do his work. She soldiers on despite the crackle-whip of her anger, slaving over under the sun, elbow-deep in metal guts and smelling of engine oil. 

She’s dreamed of this speeder for a time, and now that she has it, her smile has only grown wider. 

“Look, see,” she says when she finally acquires the lumbering speeder and, by some miracle, brings it home without being crushed under its weight. 

“It’s bigger than I expected!” She says excitedly, her arms coming up for emphasis. Her eyes sparkle. “It’s _ this _ big!” 

She laughs to herself, throwing her back onto the hot sand and reaching a bony hand up to trace the sparse clouds of the oncoming twilight. “It was hard to bring it here, you know.” Her words come out labored. She wipes her perspiring forehead but they both know it doesn’t dry. It’s the only sign of life in the cruel desert heat, and even then it’s indicative of the slow lean of the body into decay: drought. 

Thank goodness for that water storage. 

Today, the water is stored safe and the cooling unit is repaired, so Rey has all of the heavens for her perusal and all of its opportunities riding on the back of her decrepit speeder. 

Funnily enough, this has been a process, a standard operating procedure, a routine check; the girl takes whatever she can from the skeleton of an almost-picked-clean starship and she brings me along with her. I am tucked into the linens and clothes she has wrapped around herself and she plays a little game where I am her rapt audience. 

“What do you think of this one?” She says one very early morning. Desperate to sleep, she relents to wakefulness, braving the few hours before dawn and bringing a rope for climbing for the first time, determined to scale the consoled walls of a Star Destroyer she has childishly named “Tsar.” 

She employs the same self-entertainment now, bringing my rag-doll body into her tiny hands and laying me on her chest so we can watch the starless sky. 

If it had been cleaner, Rey tells me that the speeder might have been orange, just like my flight suit. 

“Such a shame!” She exclaims with a giggle. “Jakku changed its color. Shame!” She shouts to the sky. 

Jakku changes a lot of things. 

So far, the change has not crept into her heart, where a pleasant kind of warmth resides. 

“You think I can fix this gutted old bug?” She asks, lifting her head up from her spread-eagled position on the sand and looking at the thick rectangular piece of junk. 

She nods. “Yeah, I think I can. I will. Plutt didn’t train me to repair skiffs or speeders or repulsorlifts for me not to use those skills. I’ll show him.” 

In her determination, she finds renewed courage to sit up, careful to carry me in her hand before trekking up the dune upon which the speeder hovered. 

It sputters when she touches it, the engine sounding congested, but it holds up. She runs the palm of her hand along the side of the flat surface, and when she turns her hand to rap at it with her knuckles, the metal cover falls and she jumps away just in the nick of time. 

The covering is thick and chafed, and when it hits the sand, it kicks up dust on the sides, causing Rey to cough a little. 

“Rude,” she says, turning her attention to the skeletal interior of the speeder. The two thick tubes of the ten-stage compression chamber are the most noticeable, and Rey knows that at the front, under the grill, resides a duct used to pump air in for engine input. Entire bundles of cords are missing from the upper compression chamber, so that the fuel control node sits beside the sensor clusters but no wire connects them. 

“Ah,” Rey says, kicking the heavy metal a little away and inspecting the disconnected pieces. “I’ll need to get some wires in there, otherwise that power cell won’t be any good. What else?” 

She looks at the underside of the speeder, at the circular vents that allow the vehicle to change direction in flight, at the two exposed rear repulsorlifts missing four more of its identical brothers.

Rey notes that, too, peeking at the pulled wires and gaping holes where the repulsorlift parts are supposed to be. Someone must have gone through this one already, and maybe Plutt doesn’t think she can fix it. He hadn’t said anything but Rey supposes that’s what he thought. 

The fuel tank dislodges only seconds later, scraping her shoulder. It lands with a loud clang on the metal covering, and Rey’s head swivels around in caution. The fuel tank is carried under one arm while I stay held in her hand. She tucks me into her belt, groaning as the wound on her bicep screams. She climbs the seat with difficulty, the tractor beams that control the position of the chair are still shut off. Her fingers fumble at the controls. 

In the distance, a series of clicks can be heard in grating mechanical language, along with the dull press of weighty metal feet in the sand. The Teedos share the land with her, the Goazon Badlands more forgiving to them than any human girl. 

She twists the accelerator desperately, heart pumping. 

If they catch her on this speeder, they will have no qualms in taking it. 

“Kriff,” she mutters as I am shoved aside when she slides down. “Kriff, kriff, kriff. Hold on—“

She pushes the machine at the very maw of its exhaust cones where most of the heat emanates. She will have no time to think about the burn or the blisters, too busy getting her only decent transportation out of the hands of the Teedos, who roam the sands atop luggabeasts, sitting high above all else. 

In these parts, they are respected, an act that they only achieved by being born indigenous to this land. 

But Rey has learned respect begets respect, and not a single Teedo has respected her before. 

She pushes the speeder faster, almost sobbing when it wobbles atop a small dune before landing with a burst of sand inches away from the converted speeder garage of the AT-AT’s old engine compartment. 

The Teedos are getting closer. She holds me tight, muttering into my rag-doll skin, my orange flight suit, “Please R’iia,” the only other name she knows. 

“Please R’iia,” as the Teedos come close and the lone motion sensors she’s installed beep in a frequency only she can hear. 

Tears stream out of her eyes in panic, her heart beats wildly in her chest; in a broken voice she goes on— “Please R’iia,” her lips wet with tears. “Don’t let them take me.” 

Her hands tremble around me, digging into the flight suit fabric. I crumple in her hands, I absorb the salt of her tears, I listen to the grind of her teeth, I take the heat of her breath, she is scared but will not say it. Fear in Jakku is a death sentence, admitting it is a weakness. 

But she is.

She is gripped in fear unimaginable, alone, willing the clicking voices to disappear as rumblings in the distance, not close proximity questions in another language she has yet to understand. She traps her lower lip between her teeth. 

On the other side of the AT-AT, Rey hears the luggabeast’s totter. She holds her breath as she hears the Teedo jump from their seat and inspect the open hatch of her home, the circular entrance once an underbelly chute. 

Here, she has something to thank the name she’s cried out to the heavens. The scavengers honor a sacred pact: no one is to take anything from inside a scavenger’s home, everything outside it is fair game. 

So the Teedo steps back, taking his series of staccato clicks with him until the luggabeast pulls fully away. 

From her trembling form beside the exposed speeder, she lets go of me in the sand, lifting her arm and sobbing in the crook of her elbow. No one will come out of these dunes until the first streak of daylight, but she is cautious and afraid all the same. 

So she cries to herself, biting down on the skin of her arm and tasting the salt of her sweat and the particles of sand on her chapped lips. She has momentarily forgotten me in her pain and all I can hear are tremors of relief and exhaustion. 

Will anyone hear them?

After a while, she picks me up in her wet hands, staring at my eyeless face, touching my soulless body. “I haven’t given you a name,” she says, snorting her snot and wiping the slimy remnants. 

She doesn’t say anything other than that for a while, depositing the fuel tank inside her untouched home and coming back to attach the metal covering on the speeder. All the while, she holds me in her hand, and I listen patiently to the dwindling sobs, the hiccups, the small pants as she catches her breath. 

I watch her struggle to shuttle the speeder behind the red cloth draped over the garage. It goes through with a muffled clunk against the rigid walls inside, but though she worries, she knows she cannot think about it now. 

She seeks shelter inside for a while, bringing along her lamps and climbing the length of the AT-AT’s bent leg, half-buried in the sand, and settling in on the flat surface above. 

Only small pinpricks of light await her but she treasures this moment nonetheless. I share these nights with her, nights that she presses me close and tells me what our dreams are. 

Sometimes, she cries. Sometimes, she is still. Sometimes, she is curious. Sometimes, she is firm. Sometimes, she is simply vulnerable, bone-tired and looking up with pleading eyes, whispering “Come back” to anyone above who will listen. 

She looks at me, then, lifting me up into a backdrop of the sky. 

“You don’t have a name yet.” She says. She touches my lack of eyes with her thumb again, still enduring the slight burn of the heated vents. 

“I’ll call you Raeh. Like me. But spelled differently,” she says, and I’ve seen that helmet, and now I bear its name. 

“Do you know what I want to be?” She asks me, yawning. “I want to be a pilot.” 

She will do good. She will do well. She has the eyes of a girl who can do good things. 

“I’ll be a pilot someday, you’ll see. I’ll be a pilot so I can finally come back to my parents. They must have been lost,” she swallows, eyes droopy. 

“We’ll fly ships together. We’ll fix them and use them to leave this place. But I have to stay here until my parents come back. Then I can jump on a ship I built myself and take them away with me. I won’t leave you behind. You’ll be beside me and we’ll be inseparable. Friends forever, right?” 

The serene silence provides her its best lullaby. 

“Right, right.” She whispers, yawning one last time. 

“Goodnight, Raeh.” 

* * *

**CRATERTOWN, Jakku **

**35 ABY**

The trek has taken a whole day for Rey, and along with it, a considerable amount of energy. 

I sense she hates that it’s come to this. She is gripping me tightly, teeth gritted under her face wrap. Her eyes are visible from the cut-out cloth, burned around the frayed edges to tame the unruly threads that come poking at her eyes, a technique she’s seen one of the elders at Tuanul use. 

The speeder has choked and sputtered some three hours ago, the front repulsorlifts throwing in the towel with one creaking groan. Rey pulls out her fibra-rope before the speeder dives in the sand, flinging it around the heat shielding and the tractor beam seat, landing mere inches from the main body of the vehicle. She activates the chassis with a flick of her wrist, something she has learned to do after one too many visits to the Church of the Force. She stands away but the power thrums through her, an invisible ripple of unknown energy coming out of her fingers, and soon the chassis drops down from underneath, hitting the sand in silence. Here, the ground is more stable, they will not swallow her boots, and so she drags her speeder determinedly and keeps her eyes forward. 

Cratertown just a few steps ahead is home to miners spilling out from the sandblasted structures, bottles and glasses sweat in their hands. It’s the only settlement in Jakku that holds up a little better than everything else, refusing to erode in the whipping winds despite being made out of recycled and repurposed detritus. Polished as clean as they could, the residents bring them here; connecting, welding, joining, the verve of the scavengers who live and share their resources here to the point of envy for Rey. 

She can’t say the same for certain parts of the village. 

A few steelpeckers tear ruthlessly into the exposed flesh of a fellow steelpecker; ugly, gray happabores with wrinkled faces and wide, wet flat noses have their heads deep in water stations; humans and Teedos converse around fruit stalls and stands selling jewelry fashioned from mined precious gems from a mining site in the east, while skittermouses weave about under the feet of the bustling lunchtime crowd. 

In a few hours, everyone will clear out. Some will head back to the mines, but most will come back to the crash sites, prying open black boxes and control panels for something to sell. 

I wonder why she has taken me here today. 

As the girl has grown, she has shed the acute feeling that came with loneliness. As a result, she relegated me beside the flight computer, allowed me to collect dust in her sleep, in her work-filled afternoons, hot and uncomfortable in the sand as I sit perpendicular to the high metal walls of her numbered days. 

But today, I am a companion. She had looked at me with a kind of keen interest that told me whatever she was thinking was something she wanted desperately to do. 

Cratertown is quiet when the girl walks the dusty road. The Teedo population momentarily forgetting themselves in the presence of the lone human girl who has come here in a long time. It is of no consequence to her; the sooner she gets repulsorlift replacement parts, the sooner she can leave. This task, she’d told me this morning, was supposed to be accomplished hours ago when Rey knocked against Plutt’s stand and asked if she could borrow repulsorlift parts until she could make them herself. 

Plutt refused, slamming his stand closed and grunting about her shoddy job with the weequay trader’s speeder. He had wanted atmospheric thrusters installed, but Rey said that if she put in any of it in his vehicle, the combustion engine would not be able to take it and might even cause his death in case the speeder plummets in a corkscrew and hits the sand hard and deep, followed by a sharp caterwaul scream seconds before explosion. 

He did not listen. 

No one ever does. 

And so the trader takes back his payment, takes his speeder—takes almost everything of Rey, too, if he only knew—and leaves without another word, his brisk steps fading and Plutt’s heavy ones replacing it. 

She takes the slap with a hard set of her jaw, and she takes two more._ Slap, slap, _until she presses me against her chest like she used to do, sharing the tears with me that she will share with no one else. 

There will be no meal tonight. She will have to accept that. 

Life keeps going. Just because some junk trader and a weequay conspired unwittingly to shake her resolve does not mean she will concede. So she estimates her fuel, secures her quarterstaff, and rides for Cratertown hoping for the best. A burnished road greets her happabore-hide booted feet, opening up to a village of spike-crowned domed houses with windows carved out of compact sand and magnetic ore. These structures are few and far in between because everyone here knows most of the cupolas standing on circular bases and serving as houses are entrenched in excavated courtyards which hold low-impact moisture vaporators at the center, sometimes on the sides, standing sentinel beside conical power generators. These dwellings are kept cool by these same vaporators, harnessing what little moisture is in the air, converting and piping it into cooling units inside. 

But she is not here to breed jealousy of their resources. What she needs is her own. 

The girl walks, scanning the stalls for anything that might be useful. Speeder and starship parts lie deeper into the village, illicit dealers hunkering down in their own stalls and yards, evading lost merchants and travelers whose starship parts and components they filched and resold. 

One of these is the girl’s target. It’s the only reason she will venture out this far. She is thankful for the speeder, for even in its sputtering state, it managed to take them at least as far as the Sinking Fields, the last minutes of its service used up to circle around and avoid the volatile ground. 

She spots one that looks like nothing more than a hole in the wall, the awning mashed in between grim-looking two-story structures. Half the entrance portal is shrouded, casting glum shadows over a pile of half-rusted, half-useful spare parts, at least from the girl’s estimation. The other half is shot through with blinding light from the high noon sun. She covers her eyes and draws near. 

“Hello?” She calls, adjusting her satchel, holding her quarterstaff close. The alley leading toward the opening is wide enough for her speeder, and no creature has come here since she’s seen it. She assumes it is safe to push ahead. 

“Hello?” 

A loud clang rattles from inside, making her jump back. A shadow passes beyond the open double-walled durasteel doors; she holds the quarterstaff closer. 

“Who are you?” A voice grates from behind and she whips around, training the end of her quarterstaff at the intruder— 

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, girl,” the creature says with a gruff voice, the sound of his galactic basic oddly comforting. 

Human. 

“Do you own this place?” 

“Yes,” the human says. She listens, nods, and pulls her weapon back although the tight hold does not cease. 

This man is grizzled, his beard unkempt and his hair tousled. “I’m assuming you need ship parts,” he says, eyeing the speeder she is lugging around on the chassis. “That’s one odd-looking model.” 

“I built it,” the girl says. 

The man’s lips turn, his eyes shining like he can’t believe it. “Impressive.”

The girl does not have time. “I would like some repulsorlift replacements.” 

“For _ that _?” He shakes his head. “You’re going to need bigger parts. A two-meter speeder like that needs at least a 12-inch-wide replacement. I don’t have that here, sorry.” 

But the girl feels something about this man. His eyes hold secrets. “What’s your name?” She asks. 

The man is suddenly cautious, his fists clenching minutely, a split-second of fear crossing his face before it hardens. “What’s yours?” 

“Rey,” she gives it freely. It may be her name, but it is not _ hers. _

“Flint.” 

The girl looks at him curiously for a while, enough time to make him fidget with discomfort. “What?” 

“You’re lying,” she deadpans. 

“_ What? _”

She raises a hand to his face, moving it to the side with a small motion. The man’s eyes gloss over. 

“I’m lying,” he says in monotone. 

“Where is it?” 

“Inside.” 

“Where?” 

He spares no time in showing her, and she follows after she’s installed the locking mechanism to the metal covering of her speeder. More spare parts litter the narrow entrance, the floor blessedly swept to a semblance of cleanliness, more decent that the roads. There’s a desk at the center with an empty droid lubrication bath, control panels lining the rim. 

The steps to the back yard is welded metal fused into the compressed sand structure, giving light creaks as Rey steps on them. Outside, the blazing hot sun is back, stinging the back of her eyes. 

More ship parts sit here, some components tossed in along with them. Though they don’t belong together, the girl cannot deny it is a scavenger’s paradise. She can loot this place and run away and he will be none the wiser, under the influence of Rey’s… whatever-it-is. The Tuanuls say it is the Force; she says it’s R’iia’s gift for her personal protection. 

Nacelles that optimize thrust for better navigation, negative power couplers, baffles, power cells, entire fans and pipes for compression chambers, lateral thrusters—she thinks she even sees an inertial compensator, extremely hard to come by, extremely expensive, and extremely useful for her speeder. She bites her lip. Maybe she will take that… 

The man momentarily shakes from his trance and Rey has to stay focused to keep him docile with this power. 

“You will give me the parts I need,” she tells him. He repeats her request word for word as his feet mechanically move about the yard to acquire Rey’s repulsorlift request. 

It doesn’t take long; he has two twelve by twelve repulsorlift cylinders, too big for her speeder but easy enough to cut and weld. She digs out sparse belongings in the satchel and stashes one of the cylinders. It is heavy above me and so she pulls me out, strapping me against her belt and hips. She snatches the inertial compensators and heads back out, one repulsorlift cylinder tucked under arm. 

She hates that she has to do this, but Jakku is tougher to those who can’t be as tough.

“This is reasonable, right?” She says, passing lithe fingers on my face. “I need these compensators. The speeder can hit really high speeds sometimes.” 

She holds me as she nears her speeder, still concentrating enough to keep the man where he is until she can take her leave. 

The cylinders finds its way into her hauling net and she reactivates the chassis to find a place in town where she can hide and fix her repulsorlift replacements without… uninvited guests.

The threads of the energy she used lifts just a little while after she has let go of it. The man will stand there in silence, uncertain as to why with his most recent memory wiped clean. 

She walks, brisk steps charging a path for buildings at a corner of the village, when she collides into someone with a pitiful yelp. Stepping back, she apologizes.

She doesn’t have to. She knows this person.

“Ben Solo?” 

* * *

**GOAZON BADLANDS, Jakku **

**30 ABY**

Curious things are found in the desert. 

Sometimes, she finds lost gems from the mines, covered by the sands. The girl once found one and added it as decoration to her tuanul lamps. 

This… 

Is not a gem. 

At age 16, the girl has seen more human occupants in Niima Outpost in the last four years. More of them came here now, for some unknown reason. Rey is only so grateful. She is not close to them, friends with them, but she feels a sort of belongingness she has not felt in a long time. 

She studies this one. Pale and broad-shouldered, face turned to the side and eyes closed. The girl traces the footsteps in the ground. She expects a crash-landed ship, miles away but still visible, to tell her where he came from; there is none. He cannot stay here in the night, above him, steelpeckers are already circling, ready to swoop down and tear a hole in his body any minute. So she sighs and slings one of his long arms around her neck and carries him to her AT-AT home. 

“Wait,” she mutters to herself, eyeing my prone form on her belt. “What if he’s bait?” 

I do not answer though I know her theory lends credence. “Bait for what, exactly? They’re gonna give me a human to feed to distract me?” 

She blinks, looking at the forlorn man weighing her down. “Kriff. Should I just leave him then?” 

I watch emotions play on her face, sometimes expressions she is unaware of having. The girl is compassionate to a fault, tough as nails but with a big heart she likes suppressing. After a while, she nods to herself, resignedly taking the boy with her. He lies still when she deposits him on the floor of the AT-AT. She draws the thermal heating curtain over the entrance and positions a lamp near his body. 

She sets me down beside her, taking the boy’s hand in hers and pressing his finger. Next, she pinches the skin of his forearm. It is stiff when it folds back down. She tugs one side of the thermal curtain flap and lets it hang slightly open, before gently opening his mouth with her fingers. His mouth is dry. 

She has taken to talking to me again, conscious of the human she just saved. “His robes look too… pristine for this place. You think he’s from off-world?” She asks as she parts the cloth and eases the latches of his black leather vest to free up his chest. He’s still breathing. 

Underneath, he wears a fine-threaded linen shirt, soft to the touch under the girl’s rough hands. 

“Maybe he’s from the planet where my parents got lost in?” She theorizes absently. “Maybe I should wake him up, help him find his ship?” 

At the mention of the ship, she asks me, “Should I take his ship? If he’s from off-world, he’ll have parts I could sell to Plutt that could get me rations for days.” 

She doesn’t let the thought linger, shaking her head and reaching for a water canister under the hammock. “That wouldn’t be right. Wherever he’s from, I’m sure someone’s looking for him.” 

She sits him upright and tentatively taps the side of his face. His complexion is sallow, his left cheek stuck with sand and sweat. He doesn’t budge, so the girl applies a little more pressure, the hits sounding a little more like slaps. 

Finally, his eyelids flutter, deep brown eyes glossed over. Beautiful, she thinks, before tamping down on it. 

“Can you hear me?” She asks, holding his face upright. “Hello? Mister…” 

The boy doesn’t answer. The girl taps his face again. “Hello?” Louder. “Hello?”

He stirs, his shoulders move back, his eyes focus a little. “M-master?” 

Her eyebrows furrow. “Master?” 

His head just hangs. “Oh, dear,” the girl mutters, bracing her back against the massive pipe running in the middle of the AT-AT and placing his head with much difficulty on her lap. 

“Please wake up,” she tries again, cooing. “You need some water.” 

The boy blinks very slowly, his body heavy as lead but his eyes marginally more alert. There is fear and confusion there, but he is calm. 

“Where am I?” He asks. 

“The Goazon Badlands.” 

He smacks his lips. He must be feeling his dehydration now. “How did I get here?” 

The girl shrugs. “I don’t know. You were dehydrated. So I brought you here.” 

“I— thank you,” his lips press together. 

“Come, you need some water.” She tells him. His eyes land warily on the canister, perhaps cautious of its contents. The girl knows this impulse all too well, so she brings the canister to her lips and drinks from it as well. 

“See, safe?” 

The boy reluctantly fidgets, eventually relenting, but not without testing his limbs. The girl frowns. “That’ll take a while, I think. For now, will you just drink some water?” 

He looks at her, annoyed, but follows when she positions the lip of the canister close to his mouth. At first, the tilt of his head is weak. The water slakes his thirst pretty fast, and soon he’s downing the water in gulps as Rey holds the back of his head up. 

After a while, the girl moves away from under him, leaving him back on the floor. She puts the canister on the hammock, intending to refill it later. 

“Take off your robe and vest,” She commands. He stares. 

“What?” 

“Do you want to die like a dried fruit left out in the sun?” Her tone brooks no argument, so he follows her orders. He is left in his soft linen cloth when she comes back, frozen pallie pop in hand, a novel item brought by one of the Tatooine traders who came here a week ago. She was saving it for something else, but her water supply is dwindling and this boy still needs to come back to himself if she is to send him back away. 

“Eat this,” she offers. His eyes are cautious on the pop again. The girl sighs, tearing the packet and running a pink tongue along the pop. His eyes land on the act, his eyelids drooping somewhat, before she hands it to him. “Eat it. I’m not going to poison you.” 

So he does, licking at the pop. 

“Why did you save me?” He asks, just as Rey bundles up under her thermal blanket because the boy might need the cool draft, but she doesn’t. It will get cold very fast. 

“Steelpeckers were going to eat you.” 

“Steelpeckers?” 

Just then, one hops in view through the flap of the thermal blanket at the entrance. She opens her palm and pushes it back with her power. 

The boy spots it, eyes twinkling. “You have the Force?” 

“It’s not,” she says. 

“It is.” 

“No, it’s not. Finish that pop and take off your boots next. You need to cool off if you want to be able to move.” 

He stares again, as though studying her, she stares back, holding me close to her chest. It’s a front seat view of the interaction. The boy looks down at me, gaze trailing at my orange flight suit legs. 

“Are you a daughter of a Resistance fighter?” He asks, his voice is dulcet. 

The girl looks at me as if on my expressionless face she can find her answer. “No,” she says. “I’m no one.” 

The boy looks around. “Where are your parents?” 

“They’re… lost.” 

“Lost?” 

“Yes. I’m waiting for them here in case they come back. They’ll come back.” She doesn’t know why she’s telling him. She convinces herself he is a hallucination she will forget in the morning and the thought somehow comforts her. 

“Which planet is this?” 

“Jakku.” 

“Ah,” he says, looking troubled. “This is the farthest planet in the Western Reaches. I must have crash-landed.” 

“I guessed that too, but I couldn’t find your ship, sorry.” 

“I was with someone. My master. Did you find him, too?” 

She shakes her head, her arms around me tightening. The movement does not go unnoticed to the boy, whose eyes held the same grave attention as the girl’s. 

“Just you,” she says. 

He nods to himself, the stick the only thing left of the pop. 

“How are you feeling?” She asks. 

The boy lifts a hand sluggishly, flexing his fingers, smooth planes pale skin. “A little better now, thank you.” 

She nods. “If you try something, I’ll have to subdue you.” 

He looks at her. “Alright.” 

A gust whooshes from the flap just as he turns to his side and eases his boot off his feet. The girl giggles. What big feet he has. 

“What?” 

“Your feet are big.” 

“I know,” he mutters with a timid grin. “They look strange, don’t they?” 

She nods her response. He lies back down, shortly after he also shed his robe and vest and put it to the side. His chest is wide and continues to widen when he inhales, deflates when he exhales. 

“This human is bigger than the humans I see here,” she whispers to no one in particular. I hear it. “What do you think he eats?” 

“So, you don’t know where your parents are?” 

She shrugs. “If I knew where they were, would I stay here?” 

“If you didn’t know where they were, wouldn’t you scour the galaxy to find them?” 

She would, she thinks. She really would. “It’s not that easy.” 

“Why not?” 

“I can’t leave this planet. What if they come back here and when I’m off somewhere else?” 

“Have you considered what would happen if they don’t come back here?” 

She has. I’ve watched her cry herself to sleep for many nights at the thought. _ I miss them, Raeh _ . _ I miss them so much _. 

Her face hardens. “You have no right to say that to me.” 

He looks hurt; somehow, he knows what he’s done. “Sorry.” 

She turns around, at least she tries to, before his pleading voice stops her. “I can help you.” 

She looks at him. “What?” 

“If you… if you help me find my ship, I’ll ask my master to bring you along with us back to Coruscant. My mother can help you find your family in the planet records.” 

“If they come back here in the time I’m gone, what am I going to do?” 

His lips purse. “I don’t know. But maybe I can give you some options.” 

“If you’re doing this to make me indebted to you after I healed you—“ 

He vigorously shakes his head. “No, no. I just wanted to help. I… know what it’s like to long for parents.”

“You said you had your mother.” 

He chuckles low, it’s an embittered sound. “You can have parents and not feel them with you.” 

“That’s sad.” 

“It is. But don’t be sad for me,” he yawns. “Just… think about the stars.” 

“Is that what you do? Think about the stars?” 

“It always appeases me.” 

“There aren’t a lot of stars here.” 

The boy stares at her, eyelids half-mast and sleep-heavy. “I’ll bring you the stars.” 

“You mean you’ll bring me _ to _ the stars,” she corrects. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles, so quiet, so soft. “That, too.” 

The girls fidgets, looking at me as she asks one last question before the boy falls asleep. “What’s your name?” 

“Ben. Ben Solo.” 

* * *

**CRATERTOWN, Jakku **

**35 ABY**

The man, for that is what he is now, before Rey smiles, bearing almost the same robes as he once did. Where it hung on his form before, it was filled out now, his wide shoulders broadening, once lanky arms thick with muscle, and once bony fingers now stronger and firmer. 

It’s not as though she hadn’t seen him for too long. He usually comes back around with the same plea on his lips once every year. 

This year, he seems to be in search of something else other than her, and if his Cratertown presence is any indication, she concludes his visit is slightly more… diplomatic. Well, as diplomatic as anything can be in this rock. His crumpled hold on a faded map clues her in on where he’s been, and she finds it amusing. 

“Let me guess,” the girl says. “You got that from a Teedo?” 

The edges of the map dances in the wind as his hand tightens around it, annoyed. “Yes.” 

“That map is inaccurate.” 

“I’m starting to see that.” 

“Came back here for me?” She teases, but she’s already tilting her head to the side to urge him to follow. His lips are pressed tight with the single-mindedness of whatever his goal is, but his eyes are the same soft browns she’s dreamed about night after night. A fact I’m sure she will never tell. 

“Haven’t you made it clear that you still didn’t want to leave?” 

She has, on many occasions, but the back and forth of his visits had almost always been about leaving. He came back to try and take her away, and she always said no. 

“I have,” she says. The conviction that used to be there is gone, replaced by some errant longing. “What are you looking for?” 

The boy looks at her. “A person.” 

“So many of them hide out here, would you like to be more precise?” 

“My master didn’t say a name. He said I’d know when I get here.” 

The girl snorts, her arm straining as she pulls the chassis. “That sounds frustrating.” 

“It is,” he sighs, watching her. “You sure you don’t need any help with that?” 

“No,” she answers, a little defensively. The impulse to be standoffish is too strong. She softens her tone. “I can take care of it, thank you.” 

He nods curtly, stashing the unhelpful map in his own satchel and setting his eyes on the lone and half-decent structure in this place: Ergel’s Bar. 

“What other instructions did your master give you?” 

The boy seems unsure, his lips pursing and turning downward. “Nothing. He says I already know.” 

“Do you?” She asks, gazing at him. His eyes bore into hers. 

“I’m not sure.” 

“Maybe I can help you figure it out?” 

“Funny how we always do this. Figure things out,” he chuckles. And because they know they’ve shared so many things before, they share that chuckle, too. I watch Rey as she lets herself go. In the unforgiving place that is Jakku, young Rey will never admit how bright of a spot Ben has been in her life. 

“So how are the solar arrays holding up?” 

* * *

**GOAZON BADLANDS, Jakku **

**31 ABY **

It is usually easy to know what to have in the desert. 

Water is the most obvious need. 

I was there when the girl hauled a torn section of a TIE fighter solar array. More than water, the girl found need of energy, as well, determined to make the salvaged flight simulator work like new as best as she can. Part of me wondered why this mattered, as she slaved over night and day trying to get the Eksoan power generator up and running. 

The solar array was barely fixed, the attenuation servos attached to the support frames were uprooted and the heat exchange was seared with burns, possibly from internal combustion or years of neglect. These had been used to fend off enemies during the Galactic Civil War, of course, and the girl knew to expect them to be broken. But she never lost hope. She stared at the flight simulator’s empty face and got to work, until such time that she got the computer running. She’d welded the servos easily on the solar array, but another trip was needed to be taken to find the heat exchange. 

She leaves the AT-AT a few hours before high noon, covered in rags and clothes, her headwrap, mouthguard, and goggles perched on her forehead when she sees him in front of her again. 

A year has gone by but it doesn’t show on his face, the same boyish grin she saw before he flew back to the stars again remains. 

“Hello,” he greets, eyes discreetly scanning the girl’s form. He spots me hanging on her waist belt, smiling to himself. 

“You’re bringing Raeh along.” 

The girl looks at me. “Yeah,” and here she reluctantly adds. “A girl gets lonely in gutted Star Destroyers.” 

“I’m here now.” 

“You weren’t five minutes ago and, what are you even doing here?” She asks, her feet already carrying her to the direction of the towering tip of a Star Destroyer in the distance. She walks briskly so that Ben has to jog behind her. 

“What are we hunting for today?” He asks. She whips her head around, giving him a once over, weighing her options. On her face there is a complicated dance of emotions, until one wins over: Caution. 

“Something important,” she says, before trudging away again. 

It’s a relief he doesn’t say anything else on the ride to the wide rearmost thrust nozzles that span about a hundred meters across, bigger than anything Rey has ever seen. Her speeder is at the bottom of a high dune. On the other side, she treks a more manageable one, pulling her net and sled behind her. The tunnel inside has already been picked clean, the turret power cells are also devoid of necessary spare parts, leaving it in a hull of scoured durasteel casing. The walls are rusted, cavities around the power cells allowing for entry to various once-fortified bulkheads connected by circuits of access tunnels. 

The rusty floor she walks on leads inside one of the torn away sections, stopping just before a metal beam that fell diagonally and braced against one of the walls some time ago. The girl’s soft boots barely make a sound on the rusty, eroded metal, compared to the boy’s steel-toed ones which hit the floor with loud clangs. Rey whirls around, glaring at him. “Really?” 

Ben’s brow furrows. “What? These are my _ shoes _.” 

“Just try to be quiet. I came here early to avoid the more ruthless scavengers.” 

Embarrassed, Ben makes an effort.

The girl walks deeper into the belly of the gargantuan ship, looking behind thick reactor chambers and sublight engines devoid of wires and much everything else. If her hunch is right, most of the Star Destroyers have already been cut away from years of scavengers always digging around. The bigger, more discreet spare parts are therefore huddled behind more durable pipes. She has found some good finds digging around behind these pipes, to the point that she sometimes wonders if anyone will ever catch on that this system is incredibly faulty. 

It doesn’t take long for the girl to uncover the thin grating of the heat exchange plate she’s looking for. Most scavengers unearth TIE fighter parts poking out of the sand in the center of the graveyard and put them here, in, again, what is an incredibly faulty system. 

“Help me with this,” she says, hauling the plate carefully as Ben catches the other side with his hands. 

“We have to move fast,” she adds, securing the plate onto the sled and slinging a net over it. “If someone finds out I took these, they’re going to go after me.” 

“Why do you take it, then?” 

“Do you know some place I could just request for heat exchange plates?” 

The boy presses his lips together. 

“That’s what I thought. Come on.” 

The net is hung on the other side of the speeder where the plate is snug underneath the sled. She has to get this in one piece back to her home if she hopes to fix the array by sundown. 

Behind her, Ben mumbles disjointedly to himself, something about falling off from her speeder because she goes too fast. She hears it, though, that’s hardly a surprise. The desert trains you for toughness, too. 

“Just hold on to me.” 

So he does, for dear life, all the way back to the AT-AT. The girl ignores him when she jumps down, eagerly bursting inside her little home to drag the energy grid. The servos are already cleanly attached, the accumulator lines neat and tidy on a bed of one heat exchange plate, waiting to be sandwiched with another before Rey finishes it off with a solar array collector on top. 

As she works, she sets me down beside her on the more compact sand near the entrance of her home, joining parts and fitting pieces together like a puzzle. Ben stands watching. 

“I can help you with that, you know.” 

“No, thank you.” 

This time, he ignores her, sitting beside her on the ground and running fingers on the servos she’d welded. “This is so clean, you should be proud of yourself.” 

She doesn’t answer, looking at the ridge lined on the inside of the support frame where the collector is supposed to go. She pushes the grill in and somewhere inside the frame, it clicks into place. With a triumphant smile, she stands up and braces the array against one AT-AT leg, hands on her hips. 

“I did it, Raeh,” she mutters with sweat on her brow. “Now all I need is to rewire the converters.” 

Even though she tunes him out, Ben hangs back and watches her proudly. She disappears for a moment inside and comes back out with various tools for the phase one and two converters, tinkering with the parts in silence. 

“You’re still not going to acknowledge me here at all?” He asks. 

“You’re already a nuisance.” 

“I have an invitation.” 

“Pass.” 

“Rey—“ the boy’s voice pleads, and his longing becomes more noticeable. He has come back in the hopes she will agree to come with him off this rock, and he seems no less determined now than the time he first came. 

“I didn’t ask for you to come and get me,” she says, voice edged with contempt. 

“You didn’t. But I still wanted to come back.” 

“You’re not what I’m waiting for.” 

“But I’m waiting for _ you _.” 

A fuse sparks into life and burns her fingers. A curse is drawn from her lips and, before she has any idea what’s going on, the boy is kneeling by her side, inspecting her hand. 

“Hey—“

“Will you just let me help you? Please, Rey.” 

She bites her lip and relents. She’s had burns before and know they hurt both her and her scavenging, so she lets him do… what he will, steadily watching him as he closes his eyes. 

Cold ribbons of energy form beneath her fingertips, emanating their own glow in the glare of the quickly-moving sun in the sky and with wide eyes, she watches as the burns fade, singed skin meeting in the middle and the wound around it closing. At last, it’s healed completely, almost as if nothing happened. 

The boy doesn’t let go of her hand, but he does look down at his feet, bashful. I wonder: has he ever done this with other people before he met Rey? I don’t suppose so. 

“You can use the Force for a lot of things,” his voice—quiet and easily carried away by the shifting winds—chips away at the skepticism on the girl’s face. It’s the first time I’ve seen her truly consider the Force that the elders have been talking about. The first time she looks at her hand and displays another emotion other than incredulity—wonder. 

It’s fleeting, but it’s there, and after a year of using it for various things—moving lamps, cushioning falls from scaling heights inside a starship with varying levels of success, or simply rearranging the trinkets in her home—this frisson of energy she used to call ‘magic’ may just be known to her as the Force, too. 

“And your master helps you with… this?” She asks, eyes fixed on their joined hands. 

The boy stares at her instead, transfixed by their closeness. She doesn’t see it, too distracted by her newly-healed hand. 

“Yes,” he answers. 

“You want to help me with it?” Her face lifts and now their noses are inches apart. 

“If you’ll let me,” the boy’s eyes flit from her eyes to her lips and, for a moment, the girl doesn’t understand. When she does, she breathes deeply through her nose but does not pull away. She’s seen people do this before in tents in Niima Outpost when they thought no one was looking. There’s something to be said about her own attempt at it. 

Their lips join slowly, a quiet connection, a simple act that encompasses a thousand words all at once. Her lips mash and move in such a way that the boy chuckles, though even he is unsure. But his long and gentle hands caress her cheeks as he deepens the kiss, eyes closed. The girl is close to crying as he holds her, her fingers coming up to touch his own. 

He kisses her with everything he has and for someone like Rey who never had anything, it is the ultimate sign of respect. 

It’s so short, but the girl is breathless when it ends, smiling through teary eyes. “You could have just used the Force to help me fix this converter.” 

The boy smiles. “Then I wouldn’t have gotten to kiss you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was so contemplative and melodramatic. I really loved writing it! As I am still undecided on whether I'm going to add another chapter to this, I would like to know what y'all thought of this chapter so far! :3
> 
> And if you're still here, thank you so very much for reading through the whole thing. I know it's kinda long. Hopefully it was both long and well-executed, at least. Aaaaa. <3


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